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E-COMMERCE
Instagram’s 3 step plan for becoming the ultimate shopping app!
Yesterday, in the social media predictions for 2019 highlights, one of the forecasts was that Instagram will be a standalone shopping app for 2019.
Well, looks like Instagram is preparing for it already!
For now, it’s an effort to engage the lurkers who just save or bookmark the products they like on your Instagram pages.
Phase 1 of the tool, which lets users bookmark the products they like on Instagram was released last month.
Currently, they are working on phase 2, which is an insights tool for marketers offering them insights on the items being bookmarked by users.
Eventually, the plan is to provide marketers with an ability to retarget users who have bookmarked or saved these particular products. That’s the whole 3-step plan.
Instagram has been experimenting with various shopping features since 2016. Allowing brands to tag products, users tapping these tags to view product details etc.
However, they now have a dedicated shopping team and the efforts are on to bring more advertising components with these features in 2019.
Well, it indeed seems 2019 might be a huge year, even bigger than 2018, as far as shopping campaigns are concerned. All we can do is, prepare our strategies well aligned with these new feature developments, well ahead of time, to make the most out of Instagram in 2019.
How shipping rates will change in 2019 and how to prepare!
One thing that keeps us on our toes when running an e-commerce store is shipping costs. And one thing you should prepare for 2019 is more changes to these shipping costs. These are not mere predictions we are trying to make, as we did yesterday. It’s a certain thing!
Every year, shipping carriers review their pricing and make adjustments to their shipping rates due to ever-changing fuel costs and industry demands. And Shopify shared some stats on how the shipping costs will change for the main carriers.
And given that shipping costs have a big influence on the final buying decision of the prospects or for your own bottom line, it’s important to have a look at them!
UPS: From December 26th, UPS retail prices will increase by an average of 4.9%.
USPS: In 2019, retail prices for most USPS services will also increase. First-Class Package Service will change to zone-based pricing and Balloon pricing for Priority Mail will be eliminated.
DHL Express: From the first day of 2019, DHL Express retail prices will increase by an average of 5.1% for their DHL Express Worldwide shipping service.
Canada Post: In 2019, Canada Post retail prices will increase by an average of 4% domestically and 2% internationally.
Do you use one of these services? Well, have a look at them and adjust your pricing in order to not lose profitability!
Looking into the future is important. But it’s also important to look back at what’s happened in the past too. And what was that big thing in 2018?
Free shipping! Obviously!
And following this one, here is a post on how to make it pay off!
Make shipping great again…
“Did you say free shipping?” – Every prospect in the Milky Way Galaxy before converting
Shipping can be a factor that incentivizes comparison shoppers and that pushes them over the purchasing line! But the problem for store owners is that it’s hard to stay profitable when offering this incentive to people.
The battle for e-commerce supremacy between mega-retailers forces businesses of all sizes to play this costly shipping game.
However, it’s hard for small businesses to sustain this battle in the long term, hence here are some ways you can make it less painful.
Number one strategy is to drive a higher AOV. Which businesses prevail in this game? The ones that can pay more to acquire a customer.
And having a bigger AOV means you can spend more benjamins on acquiring customers, meaning no-cost shipping is the bait you can use in 2019 to attract new buyers!
Raise your prospect intention: Offer free shipping in exchange for contact information. You can greet first-time visitors with an offer to sign up for your list in exchange. This option helps you get in front of potential new customers immediately.
On the other side, you are collecting data from your prospects. Who doesn’t love data?
Get more value from high-margin products: Free is such a powerful word! And sometimes buyers do what you tell them to do, in order to qualify for that offer!
How to take advantage of this? By offering shipping at no extra cost only on orders that contain higher margins! In this way, you can still benefit from the power of the magical word without affecting your earnings!
Free shipping where shipping is cheaper: Consider offering it in geographies that are close to distribution centres, which tend to be cheaper to ship to. This approach can maximize conversion rates while keeping your revenue figures intact.
Realize it doesn’t have to come with two-day delivery: Amazon has trained consumers to expect their orders without paying for shipping AND within two days. This is a costly combination unpalatable for most retailers.
Even for a certain kind of products, not even Amazon is able to make a penny of. So consider it, yet don’t stress out on delivering in the shortest time too. Free can be more desirable than fast!
Google adds pay per conversion bidding
We have always heard marketers complain about the low quality of traffic and clicks they have experienced when running impression or click-based campaigns on Google’s vast display network.
Great news here! Google is now giving advertisers the ability to buy GDN traffic based on conversions! This means you will only pay for conversions, rather than low-quality clicks from its huge display network.
Not just that, you can even set Target CPA bids for display campaigns, just like you used to do on Search campaigns.
However, in order to be eligible to pay based on conversions, the following conditions need to be met:
– For display campaigns, 100 conversions in the past 30 days.
– For smart display campaigns, 50 conversions in the past 30 days.
– The time between click and conversion must be less than 7 days. (for at least 90 percent of those conversions.)
– Target CPA must be less than $200.
– This is not available for offline conversions or conversions imported from calls or sales force.
If you meet the above eligibility criteria and still get an error message while trying to use this feature, your account may be ineligible for “undisclosed reasons.” However, this eligibility is refreshed daily. So, keep trying!
SPONSORED
NUTRA TALKS
Tips, tricks and case studies straight from Everad.
So, we gonna start with kudos to AWA. The event was a true blast! Thanks to every partner of ours for productive meetings and opening new business horizons. We have thrown tons of insights in regards to COD nutra vertical and hope it will help affiliates to earn 6-7 figures with us!
For those who missed the chance to speak to us live, we will reveal best-kept secrets here, as always.
1. Asia is still the hottest region for COD. We expanded our native call-centre and now Thailand is fully uncapped. Highly recommended to drive traffic to the fresh offers, like Luray Bustier.
We have also presented a new geo – Malaysia. Start campaigns just now in order to get cream of the crop profit. Payouts for MY start from $9 and there is always bump available for WTAFF readers!
2. Many affiliates with SS and Trials traffic are testing more COD in tier 2/tier 3 geos, because of the lower competition and no chargeback issues.Everyone seek to monetize SEA and EEU traffic in the most effective way and COD is the answer. Especially when your angle could stay the same.
3. Let’s talk traffic sources…
Push notifications are doing extremely well at the moment and allow you to invest as low amount for the tests, as possible.
Let’s not forget FB. Despite the fact of the bans and necessity to cloak most of the ads, it is still one of the best sources for cheap nutra leads (and top-notch ROI.) Not only for pros, but for novices too.
Yes, you can’t just open an ads manager and earn without risk. It requires a business approach. But, if you do everything right, your account can live for a very long time (tip, you should warm it up with some kind of mainstream e-com campaign). Here are some ad examples that are successfully used in camps of our FB affiliates.
Niches are very broad – from men’s health to bleach creams. For the best experience use a tracker with in-built link-changing functionality.
We also want to mention adult sources. They are quite a big pocket of traffic for nutra offers of a specific niche… But many affiliates forget about them because dating seems to be a more relevant vertical for it. That’s not 100% true.
By filtering the right sources and split-testing your banners you can definitely achieve a nice ROI. To get an idea which creatives will work best, go to some adult sites and check them real-time. Some of our offers are already in huge adult smartlinks and get stellar EPC for everyone driving traffic for them.
These tips should have you ready for early 2019 when everyone has a New Year’s resolution that involves making themselves look better, physically. You know what that means, right? Offers convert more than usual and there’s a high demand for cap!
So take the learnings here and hit us up now to make sure you don’t miss out on Everad’s best offers for 2019!
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Just a dude showing his crypto-opulence in Hong Kong
What do you think might happen if you are a billionaire and wanted to give back to society?
An arrest! Yes, that’s exactly what happened after a crypto guy threw stacks of HK $100 from the rooftop of a building in Hong Kong.
He announced on FB that money will be “flowing from the sky”. And as it turns out, the guy wasn’t lying at all. He actually went ahead with making it rain.
It literally caused havoc as citizens reportedly became frenzied in the rush to collect as many bills as possible.
As it turned out, it wasn’t out of courtesy or giving back, heh… It was part of his guerrilla marketing campaign for the launch of a new coin…
People who managed to get their hands on some stash were warned by authorities to hand it back. Dammit, party poopers! Why you always gotta do this…
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